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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24784753">is there still magic in the midnight sun?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/averyk4/pseuds/averyk4'>averyk4</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(canon typical), 60's/70's/80's AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Racism, graphic description of attempted hanging, i deviate from the script for reasons of im the author and i thought it would be fun, really an excuse for fast cars and sad boys</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:35:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,330</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24784753</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/averyk4/pseuds/averyk4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>John’s lungs burn, his neck burns, everything burns but he opens his eyes and sees salvation.</p>
<p>“Hello, son,” a man says, leaning over him. The sun is just behind his head, and for a moment John is sure the nuns were right, Jesus and Mary and God are real and he’s met them but then he comes back into himself, feels the pain and the tension and the terror come back to him like old friends. </p>
<p>And he cries.</p>
<p>(A non-linear AU with some minor, and then some major, canon-divergence. Set between 1960 and 1982.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Abigail Roberts Marston/John Marston, Hosea Matthews/Dutch van der Linde, John Marston/Arthur Morgan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. when you work for the father your sin is never saved</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from "a dustland fairytale" by the killers, a song which I have always thought has a sort of haunting, heartbreaking beauty to it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Blackwater, West Elizabeth - 1982</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a wafting scent of stale cigarettes and and staler beer as he opens the door to the bar — it isn’t exactly pleasant but it </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> familiar. A homecoming of sorts, the kind John experiences every time he enters. It’s like a father who never loved him, a father who blamed him for the death of his mother and the war flashbacks and the god damned goons that terrorized their neighbourhood, as if that’s something within the control of a seven year old. Like the two men who took him in years ago, moulded him into this useless shape and left him swimming, drowning, flailing underwater because he never learned how to goddamned swim. A warm embrace, comforting in its particular sort of constricting way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John relishes it, leans into the pain.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The bar, to the surprise of fucking no one, is dead. Again. It’s January and fucking freezing, cold air blowing across the semi-frozen expanse of Flat Iron Lake and bathing Blackwater in a perpetual haze of ice and snow and shit. He’s inclined to ask to leave early, except he still has Abigail to think about. The boy. Overdue rent and the cable bill and collectors threatening his every goddamned step. So he stays. Polishes the glasses. Runs the dishwasher. Waves goodbye to Bonnie and agrees to lock up when she says she’s headed home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s always worse when he’s alone with his thoughts. John has never considered himself a smart man, but that isn’t to say that he doesn’t think. The television is buzzing something about a boxing match, the sort of thing he would have relished hearing about in his younger days, but he can’t be bothered to give a fuck beyond noticing that Pedroza retained his title and the three poor souls who’ve found themselves at MacFarlane’s seem to think its bullshit. It doesn’t matter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing matters.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He polishes the glasses again, because the only other option is closing up and as much as he wants to </span>
  <em>
    <span>leave</span>
  </em>
  <span> he isn’t sure he can bear another cold drive home, another night on the couch because there’s nowhere else for him. Not that he can blame Abigail, of course. She put up with his bullshit for years, for far too long. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His hair forms a curtain around his face as he wipes the inside of a glass, an impenetrable shield against the bullshittery of the world, the unfairness of being left so utterly alone without a fucking paddle and trying to wade up shit creek. There’s a cold gust of January air as the door opens, but John can’t be assed to look up, can’t find it within himself to do anything more than grunt in the newcomers’ direction. With any luck, it’ll be some piss poor asshole waiting for the bus and John will have the opportunity to take his aggression out on something that isn’t the hard cinderblock wall of the staircase in his apartment building. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As if he’d be so lucky.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He hears the familiar squeak of an ass sliding against the incredibly cheap pleather of a barstool. It’s the sort of grating noise that you can’t help but cringe at, and John loathes it with all the vitriol he usually directs towards his old family. Or — whatever they are. For all his thinking, he tries not to focus too hard on what exactly Dutch is to him now. Or Hosea. Or — </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Arthur</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” he says, although it comes out more like a question than a statement. John’s face is flat, a schooled impassivity borne from years of more or less going through the motions of existing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“John,” he says, simply. His voice is the same, unchanged, and it isn’t the sort of voice that John is liable to forget, not after fourteen years of running with him. Running from the law, from other gangs, from the sort of trouble Dutch and Hosea live for. Lived for. John isn’t certain, isn’t certain he </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be certain. Arthur clears his throat, another familiar sound, and breaks John out of the introspection he’d slipped into. “Ain’t you gonna pour me a drink? Or are you just behind that bar for show?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks older, in all the usual ways someone would look older after eight years of what John can only assume is hard living. Arthur didn’t leave, didn’t get out of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>life</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and it shows. Crows feet around the eyes, a hardness in the set of his lips where there used to be mirth. He’s still a big man, broad and tall and well muscled, but his clothes fit just a little looser than they used to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Or maybe that’s John’s unreliable memory and a lifetime spent looking up to the man. Larger than life even in his least fond rememberings. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John crosses his arms, nose up in the air, image of the petulant child he spent years denying he wasn’t. “I ain’t sure I want </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>kind of business here, Morgan.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“C’mon, now. It’s been eight years. Ain’t all that bad business behind us?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John isn’t sure what Arthur wants, what he’s hoping to gain from playing the placating big brother. It’s a role they’re both familiar with, and John wonders aimlessly if Arthur is slipping into it out of habit more than anything else. But Arthur is right. It </span>
  <em>
    <span>has</span>
  </em>
  <span> been eight years since the gang more or less dissolved, since the life John knew crumbled. He watched it happen, watched as Dutch left him in the middle of the street to be taken in by the cops, booked for grand theft and left to rot in a jail cell. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So maybe he’s not fucking over it yet. Sue him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Still — better to play dumb until he knows what Arthur wants, he figures. “I ain’t sure I’m following. We ain’t got no bad business between us. I’m just a bartender tryin’ to keep ahead of the bills an’, frankly, I’d like to keep it that way. So don’t bother letting the door hit your ass on the way out.” A pause, and he pantomimes thinking, snorts in amusement. “Better yet, </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> let the door hit you. I could use a good laugh.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur sighs, clearly put upon, and looks at his hands. John looks at them too. They’re big, scarred things, and for a moment John has a sense memory of what it’s like to have them curled around his arm, playing with his hair, pinning him down and —</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That</span>
  </em>
  <span> is not a useful thought, and John locks it firmly back into the recesses of his mind. Where it belongs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hosea’s dyin’,” Arthur finally says. “An’ Dutch — well, I ain’t too sure where Dutch’s head’s at right now but it ain’t where it needs to be.” And oh, that’s a low blow. John’s known that Dutch hasn’t been all there, hasn’t been cognizant of the way his actions have consequences for long years now, and John paid the price. Four years in prison, four years away from his son and his woman and now he’s barely even welcome, a fly on the wall of Abigail Roberts’ life, waiting to be finally swatted away for good. But Hosea — Hosea was a father to him in all the ways that counted, even when he faltered, even when he </span>
  <em>
    <span>failed</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “An’ — it’s time, John. I have people, </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span> people, an’ I need help gettin’ them out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John laughs, an ugly barking thing. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Help</span>
  </em>
  <span>? That’s a bit rich, comin’ from you.” He knows, deep in his gut, that he should say no, shouldn’t let himself be dragged back into the madness of a gang that didn’t want him anymore, but — he knows he will. Knows it like he knows the scars on his face, his neck. Knows it like he knows the pain of being left for dead. He can’t deny Arthur anything, not then and not now. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Brothers</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and then more, once upon a time. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can see Arthur raising his hands up, placating, and John waves his own hand to shut him up. “What the hell sort of help do you think I can offer anyways?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur’s hand drags down his face, exasperation evident, and John can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. “I knew this was a bad idea.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe,” John agrees cheerfully, teaching for two glasses and pouring three fingers worth of whiskey into both of them. “But if you’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>here</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you must surely be desperate. I ain’t heard a lick from any o’ you since I got carted away to Sisika, not even a </span>
  <em>
    <span>letter </span>
  </em>
  <span>from dear Uncle Tacitus, and now you need help?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah. Shit, but I do.” Arthur accepts the whiskey without more than a grunt, tosses it back like he’s parched. “I know — Dutch did you wrong. He did us all wrong, an’ it took me years to see it.” His face looks painfully serious, and John has a hard time meeting it. Does anyways, because he’s always loved the burn of cool steel against his ribcage, and this feels a bit like that, but a bit more too, like Arthur could burn his heart away if he asked in just a specific way. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John leans against his side of the bar, pressing one hip against it, looking more casual than he feels. Rubs at his nose. Stares down at his whiskey before finally pushing it towards Arthur as well. Arthur taps his hat, an old mannerism picked up from an antiquated time, antiquated caretakers yearning for a time they’d missed by the better part of a century. Arthur takes his time with this one, and they’re silent for a moment, silent </span>
  <em>
    <span>together</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and it feels to John like maybe this moment holds some heavy weight that they’re lifting together. Sisyphus on his own is doomed to forever struggle towards the top of his mountain, Atlas to hold the world on his shoulders, but together? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you need?” John asks, like it’s as simple as that. And maybe it is.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Cook County, Illinois - 1960</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s been years since John has truly felt </span>
  <em>
    <span>scared</span>
  </em>
  <span>, years since his daddy died and a collection of ugly women in habits looked him over, deemed him lousy and underfed and shuttled him off to the nearest available home. The home had been large, but cramped in a peculiar sort of way, a family of five inviting the </span>
  <em>
    <span>less fortunate</span>
  </em>
  <span> into their lives all for a few spare dollars from the government. It was a miserable experience, only made endurable by the knowledge that he could leave at any time in the night if needed to. And he did, like a thief, although he didn’t like to think about it like that. He was a regular Doc Savage, a master of all trades, out on an adventure to heal some poor forgotten tribe in -- Tahiti, maybe. He didn’t fucking know, and he didn’t fucking care.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jumping out that window had been the last time he’d felt terror deep down into his boots, back coated in a thin sheen of sweat. Until now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re pig fuckers, the lot of them, and John tells them such in no uncertain terms. He’s kicking, swinging, but he’s twelve and lanky and underfed and there’s three of them. They’re threatening to string him up, as if that’s the sort of shit that even happens to white kids anymore, not in Illinois, but they seem pissed enough to attempt it and John has no fucking way to worm out of this mess.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In some ways, John figures he deserves this. He’s lived a useless life up until now, not wanted by parents, or the system, or even the other urchins he’s tried to make friends with in the three years he’s been out here, eking out a living on the edges of Chicago like some sort of fucking rat. Sometimes, he imagines he’s a wolf, hunting, stalking his prey -- usually two day old bread crumbs even the crows won’t touch -- but it’s the sort of childish fantasy his father would be disappointed to hear he’s still entertaining. He’s not a child, he’s twelve, and he’s managed to lock those parts of himself so firmly within his chest that John doubts they’ll ever see the light of day again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Part of John doubts that </span>
  <em>
    <span>he’ll</span>
  </em>
  <span> ever see the light of day again either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can feel the sunset on his face, and for a brief moment, he stops the struggling, stops kicking out, and lets the sun warm his face. The men holding him go slack, too, and it’s all the chance he needs to squirm out of their grasp, flopping onto the hard gravel of the road with a thump. The wind is knocked out of him, and he barely manages to scrabble up on bloody hands and knees, and John knows that if he just manages to put a few feet of distance between them, he’ll be away, but by the time he’s almost free, they have him again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This time, he knows he won’t be able to escape. They’re holding tight, promising all manner of terrible ails to befall him if he tries anything </span>
  <em>
    <span>funny</span>
  </em>
  <span> again. The threat, the </span>
  <em>
    <span>knowledge</span>
  </em>
  <span> of what they might do to him is enough that he goes mostly slack in annoyed acceptance. There’s a man climbing up a tree, a big American elm, the sort of poetic thing the nuns he stayed with after the hospital might have appreciated. Something about America and freedom and how his father, God rest his soul, was a good man, a troubled man, who fought for his country with a patriotism other men could have dreamed of. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The nuns didn’t know shit, but John supposes that isn’t quite their fault.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The man in the tree is tying a noose, an honest to god noose, and the colour rushes out of John’s face all at once. He knows he isn’t heavy enough for it to snap his neck, knows they intend to drag it out, make him suffer for his sins, such as they are, as if he hasn’t been suffering for them all his life. He loops it around a heavy branch, once, twice, three times, limb barely swaying as he puts his weight on it. John can feel panic rising in his belly, an uncomfortable realization that this really, truly, will be the end. He’s blabbing, barely even cognizant of the words he’s saying, and it’s loud enough that one of them tells another to shut him the hell up. There’s a hand against his mouth, and he’s drowning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John bites the hand, and the man pulls back with a “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Shit</span>
  </em>
  <span>!” that sets the others laughing at his misfortune. For his efforts, John gets cuffed upside the head hard enough that he’s seeing double. There’s a couple of cars in the distance, blowing up dirt behind them as they drive, or maybe it’s just one car. John can’t quite tell, figures it won’t really matter. But it’s a nice sort of thing to focus on, here. Now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s pulled up by his arms, a man on either side and the man in the tree, and he can barely make out the cars turning. If he had to guess, one might be a Roadmaster, painted up in mint green and just about as ugly as it is flashy. Definitely not fit for the sort of gravel shithole roads they have this far outside of Chicago proper. He’s never properly stolen a car, not yet -- can’t quite reach the pedals and he isn’t strong enough to heave properly on the corners of anything too old to have that fancy power steering he hears about from the newsboys. It doesn’t really matter, now. John supposes everything is a bit hopeless, really. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The rope is around his neck, and he closes his eyes, not wanting these pig fucking cocks to see the sheer terror they’d find there. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They let go.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s floating, for a moment, and then he isn’t, and he can’t breathe and everything is red. He squirms, and that makes it worse, he doesn’t move, and that makes it worse, there’s nothing that he can do and then --</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s floating again. Floating, or falling, or he’s already dead. There’s a crack like a firework, and the sound of men scrambling away from him, the sound of tires on gravel and he crumbles onto the ground, wrist making a sickening lurching noise as it collides with solid earth. John’s lungs burn, his neck burns, everything </span>
  <em>
    <span>burns</span>
  </em>
  <span> but he opens his eyes and sees </span>
  <em>
    <span>salvation</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hello, son,” a man says, leaning over him. The sun is just behind his head, and for a moment John is sure the nuns were right, Jesus and Mary and God are real and he’s met them but then he comes back into himself, feels the pain and the tension and the terror come back to him like old friends. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he cries.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It takes him two weeks to realize the men aren’t going to throw him out, despite how displeased one of them -- a bull of a man named Arthur -- seems with his continued presence. Four weeks to realize they intend to </span>
  <em>
    <span>keep</span>
  </em>
  <span> him, as if he’s something real that can be kept and not a shell of a boy who grew up before he was ten. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And another two weeks before they finally can’t put up with John’s stink and decide it’s time to give him a fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>bath</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It’s a job that Arthur takes to with a particularly cruel relish, particularly when he learns that John can’t fucking swim, until he learns that </span>
  <em>
    <span>no</span>
  </em>
  <span>, tossing him into the motel pool will surely not be an easy solution to their John-sized problem. Dutch insists it will undo all the </span>
  <em>
    <span>hard work</span>
  </em>
  <span> he’d done with Hosea in saving John in the first place, and John can’t help but doubt that Arthur cares overmuch about whether or not they should have saved John in the first place.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John supposes that this is all because Arthur hates him. Arthur has hated him since he first laid eyes on him, out in some shithole motel that God and all his well wishers abandoned a decade earlier, waiting for Dutch and Hosea, or the law, or anyone else without the sense God gave them who wants to come sniffing around. But Arthur loves Dutch, loves Hosea, loves them with a fierceness that even John, who has never truly known love, can see. And so he keeps trying. Keeping trying to insert himself beside Arthur, even when it’s annoying. And eventually, especially when it’s annoying. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s with them almost a year by the time he realizes that Arthur has stopped hating him. Or, at least, Arthur no longer actively loathes him. Another city, another motel, and John has seen more in the last ten months than he has in the entire rest of his life. He can almost read now, something his father, who didn’t believe in formal education, didn’t bother with, and something that the foster house hadn’t had the time to work on. It’s slow and painful, but Hosea is patient and Dutch is there to teach him dirty words when Hosea is pretending he can’t hear. They don’t celebrate holidays, or birthdays, which is a blessing because John isn’t rightly sure about when his is anyways. They don’t stop for anything unless it’s gas, food, or a new job.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur teaches him how to hotwire a car, which is easier for John to do because Arthur is so very large and he is still the same scrawny boy in a tree fighting for air. He still can’t reach the pedals, but Arthur can, and so Dutch figures, much to Arthur and Hosea’s chagrin, that they make something of an excellent team. John beams at Arthur upon hearing this, and Arthur bats at his head playfully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And John feels like, for the first time in his life, he’s found a family.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. this town was meant for passing through</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"They’ve been circling around Butte for the better part of three years now, and John isn’t sure why. He hates this shithole mining country but Hosea insists they need to be close for reasons John apparently doesn’t need to be privy to. Dutch also seems to hate this shithole mining country, but for different reasons that John apparently doesn’t need to be privy to either."</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Blackwater, West Elizabeth - 1982</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Arthur’s apartment is dark, devoid of light or hope, an empty shell. John thinks it’s a little too on the nose, but he supposes he doesn’t really know Arthur anymore in any case.</p>
<p>They’d spent the rest of the evening at MacFarlane’s in silence, John patiently, and then impatiently waiting for the stragglers to pay up and clear out. He’d watched Arthur smoke cigarette after cigarette, and his fingers itched for one of his own but he was out, couldn’t afford another pack, and sure as shit wasn’t going to bother with asking Arthur for one. For the first time in his life, Arthur didn’t owe him shit, and John intended to keep it that way. </p>
<p>He follows Arthur home, his car making a rattling sound he thinks he knows how to fix but John has never been very good at fixing things. Breaking things, maybe. He’s always been good at that. Fingers against the steering wheel beat in time with whatever shit music the disc jockey decides is worth listening to at one a.m., and they drive into progressively shittier parts of town until Arthur pulls over beside a derelict apartment building. There’s filth in the alley and street girls calling out, a sort of cacophony of chaos that a younger John would have reveled in. </p>
<p>John figures Abigail is likely going to be pissed at him for staying out late, going to assume he’s out fucking someone, but she’s pissed when he gets home early and when he gets home on time so John really can’t be assed to see precisely what the difference is. It isn’t like Jack will notice the difference between if he’s home at midnight or four a.m., anyways. Just Abigail and her opinions, and the expectations he’s never been able to soar above (or even reach).</p>
<p>Arthur lets him in wordlessly, doesn’t bother speaking at all until the door to his apartment is closed and locked behind him. John wonders if it’s paranoia or something else that makes him that way, but then he remembers that Arthur has always been more quiet spoken than he looks, and that John has nothing to say to him besides.</p>
<p>“Nice place you got here,” John says finally, because he hasn’t been able to abide silence since he was young, and maybe it comes out more sarcastic than he intends but what’s the harm in a little rudeness between brothers. Arthur grunts in response. Charming.</p>
<p>There’s pictures pinned up on one of the walls, and John can’t help but be amused when he recognizes most of them. Stubborn as a mule, Arthur was. There’s an old shot of Arthur, Dutch, and Hosea from ‘57, wearing serious faces on the Midway in San Francisco. They’d been there for a job, but Arthur had also met Mary that night, or so Arthur had told him once, drunk and miserable and despondent enough to come to <em> John </em> for comfort. Mary had lived further north, been visiting a family member or some such. Serendipitous that they'd met up months later in Idaho, apparently. An old portrait of Arthur’s father in military dress, sneering, mean bastard that he was. Drafted unwillingly, John had always assumed. He’d been killed in Korea. The others, he lets his eyes pass over without too much thought. Mary and Arthur, at a drive-in. Arthur’s yapping retriever, Copper, in the bed of Bill Williamson’s truck. His mother, before the Typhus got her. </p>
<p>A collection of memories, decades old. John supposes he isn’t much better, living in the past like he does. </p>
<p>Two broken shells, all twisted shrapnel, churned up and spit out by the American Dream.</p>
<p>“Things — things ain’t good, Marston,” Arthur starts, apropos of nothing. John snorts, scratches his nose. Crosses his arms like he’s keeping all the sensitive parts of him together inside his rib cage. Waits for Arthur to continue. </p>
<p>“I reckon things ain’t been good for a while — since, y’know. The boat. The cars. Dutch <em> leavin’ </em> you, which ain’t what he said happened, by the by. I didn’t — learnin’ about what really happened all them years ago, havin’ goddamned Bill of all people tell the truth. That don’t sit right with me. Reckon you’re entitled to your anger. But that don’t change things.” Arthur sighs, shakes his head, finally settles down into a creaky chair. His room is a sparse bachelor suite, and aside from a chair, there’s just the cot and a rickety table to sit down on.</p>
<p>John stands. </p>
<p>“Things was bad when you was running with us,” and John nods his head in agreement. Towards the end, things had been spiraling. Dutch, getting them into bigger and bigger pulls. Hosea, not quite able to fill all the holes, make their plans airtight like they used to be when they were a smaller outfit. Suddenly there was dead bodies piling up and after eight years of reflection, John didn’t need to be a fucking scientist to figure out it wasn’t just the FBI at fault there. The fact that Arthur had waited eight years to finally bust out spoke more to Arthur’s perverted sense of loyalty and the stubbornness of needing to see a thing through even if that thing killed him.</p>
<p>Idiot man. John supposes that’s just part and parcel of what Arthur has always been, though. Impossible to separate the man and his duty to his family, such as it is.</p>
<p>“Things were bad, sure, but -- I’ll be honest, Arthur, I thought we were <em> brothers </em> . You <em> left </em> me. Dutch, he left me too, but you didn’t even bother to check if I was still alive.” </p>
<p>“He said you sold us out!”</p>
<p>“And you believed him? After all the shit we went through?” And now they’re shouting, and it feels so fucking familiar it hurts in some dark forgotten part of his heart. When he argues with Abigail, John worries about who will hear, who will finally fucking call the cops for some trumped up domestic disturbance and he fucking <em> knows </em> that the cops won’t be kind to him when they learn he has a record. But here? John figures this is just adding to the noise on the street. It’s not likely that Arthur’s neighbours, if there’s anyone else actually willing to rent out an apartment in this shit heap of a building, will complain. It’s not likely they’re the sort of people to call the fucking <em> cops </em>, of all things. </p>
<p>Still -- he’s matured, over the last eight years. Causing a scene for the shit of it isn’t the sort of thing that gets him excited anymore. He’s weary, deep in his bones, so very tired of being dragged into shit, and it’s always the same damned shit that people assume he <em> misses </em> . “I ain’t a rat, Arthur Morgan. Never was, never will be. If you -- if this was all some fucking ploy to get me to confess to sins I ain’t even committed, I’m leavin’. You an’ me -- we ain’t <em> good </em> men. But I’m tryin’, and I’ll be damned if that don’t count for something.”</p>
<p>Arthur screws up his face in something that looks vaguely like constipation. Must be having a thought, John thinks meanly, before remembering he used to do the same fucking thing years and years ago. Trying to copy Arthur, trying to <em> be </em> Arthur. That had all stopped after Dutch once asked him if he got thinking and shitting confused. Dutch had a sort of cruel callousness about John’s inadequacies, as if the incredibly different situations of their birth ensured that Dutch would always be a man of the world and philosophy and <em> bullshit </em>, and John would never amount to nothing more than a dirty greaser with a penchant for hot-wiring cars and a talent wielding a switchblade in dark alleys when they needed to be quick and quiet and clean. </p>
<p>Despite all of that, he can’t help but laugh at Arthur’s face. It’s a short bark of a laugh, and Arthur immediately ducks his head under his hat, an old tell. “Don’t pop a blood vessel -- you ain’t young enough to recover from the strain of it.”</p>
<p>“Would you <em> shut up </em> for a goddamned minute, Marston?” Arthur shoots back, but there’s no bite to it, nothing that says that Arthur is truly <em> upset </em> with him. John watches him examine his nails from under his hat, stands silently, shifting weight from one leg to the other. There’s a certain awkwardness in how they can slip in and out of familiarity with one another, at times closer than family and at times nothing more than old acquaintances. “You still with Abbie?” Arthur asks after a long moment of silence, as if it’s a normal segue. John guesses that maybe between old friends it <em> is </em>, but they were more than that once, until they weren’t.</p>
<p>“Uh -- sorta. Her and I, we’re raisin’ the boy but. After Sisika, well. I don’t rightly blame her for not wanting to be with a degenerate felon.” </p>
<p>Arthur sighs, and John thinks it sounds frustrated but he doesn’t really know anymore. Doesn’t really know what he’s even doing here, after midnight, in Arthur’s shit hole apartment. Chasing ghosts like he isn’t one himself, a hollowed out shell of a man trying to do right by a woman who won’t have him and a son that doesn’t understand where his father went for so much of his youth. </p>
<p>“We have a job comin’ up. A big one. Somethin’ about planes and the government and drugs, and none of that sits right with me. Dutch says it’s our one last big score, but I’ve heard that goddamned sentence so many times I can’t rightfully say I even know what it means anymore. I can -- I <em> have </em> overlooked a lot in my life, and I am surely a fool for it, but this lunacy is gonna get people killed, John. Good people. Hosea sees it, an’ I see it.” Arthur doesn’t look up, stares at his hands, like they’re bathed in the sins of thirty years of skirting the law. John thinks back to what they used to be -- two-bit thieves with some dreams of carving out a piece of Americana for themselves, funded by stolen cars and Dutch’s grandiose ideologies. Sometimes the memories hurt. Today, they just feel like a dull ache, a war wound embedded deep in his side that no doctor could pull out.</p>
<p>“And what am I supposed to do about that, Arthur? I ain’t no government official, I can’t fly a plane, and I sure as shit have no experience with <em> drugs </em>.”</p>
<p>“I know. I don’t know what I was hopin’ for. A miracle, maybe. Y’know, the gang considers you one of the lucky ones. You got out, you’re livin’ a clean life. ‘S enviable, is all.”</p>
<p>John snorts. “There’s shit all that’s enviable about working the shit shift at a failing bar, barely making enough to pay for the goddamned cable. If Dutch hadn’t -- well, I’d still be in the life, if it wasn’t for what Dutch did. So I suppose I still owe him. Cruel sorta joke, huh.” </p>
<p>Arthur laughs, joyless. They’re a fucked up pair, John supposes. </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>They spend the rest of the night talking, until John really has to leave or Abigail will geld him. This gets a laugh out of Arthur, something approaching genuine. He looks so fucking <em> tired </em>, like he’s been holding on too tightly to something for years and now that he’s let go of it, he can’t get his compass to point to true north anymore.</p>
<p>John knows the feeling, but John had four years in a tiny cell with another man (save for his allotted one hour of exercise, of course) to process what had happened. Arthur’s trapped, a constant cycle of torment, like Dante being guided through hell, and John thinks that maybe he’s destined to be Arthur’s Virgil, to help guide him away from the damnation of Dutch’s follies.</p>
<p>There’s no concrete ideas about how to do this yet, but John has time and space -- a week, Arthur thinks, but Arthur also confided that Dutch doesn’t trust him with much anymore. He’s been replaced with Micah Bell, a dirty rat of a man that John only vaguely remembers as joining just as he was on the way out, and it isn’t like John has had the time or the inclination to go looking for those who’d wronged him in a past life.</p>
<p>The drive is quiet, gives him the opportunity to process the evening, come up with some excuse for Abigail, not that it will truly matter.</p>
<p>She doesn’t love him, and maybe it’s for the best. He’s never been particularly adept at loving her, not as anything more than a friend and the mother of his son. John will always love her in his own way, but if there’s nothing else that comes from this evening, at least he’s been given the knowledge of what happens when you hold tight to something you weren’t meant to have for too long, like Arthur has with Dutch and his constricting sort of love. Loving, and being loved in return, should be easy, even on the days when it’s not. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Silver Bow County, Montana - 1964</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They’ve been circling around Butte for the better part of three years now, and John isn’t sure why. He hates this shithole mining country but Hosea insists they need to be close for reasons John apparently doesn’t need to be privy to. Dutch also seems to hate this shithole mining country, but for different reasons that John apparently doesn’t need to be privy to either. </p>
<p>Sometimes they go to the Nebraska's, to Idaho -- hell, one time they even drove north across the border, hiding John and Arthur in the trunk on account of their lack of birth certificates. They didn’t find anything there but canola and buffalo, but Bessie called it a romantic sort of a place for all it’s wildness and John agreed in a confused sort of way. She’d only patted his cheek, called him cute for putting up with her flights of fancy in that motherly way of hers. </p>
<p>Bessie confuses him, sometimes. Annabelle is a straightforward woman, all brass tacks and easy to understand. Bessie is too much like Hosea for John to fully understand. There’s too much going on in their brains, and not enough happening in his (according to Dutch, according to Arthur, according to <em> everyone </em>), and the way they speak leaves him speechless and dumb and filled with a wistful longing he can’t quite place.</p>
<p>The gang has grown since he’s joined. Annabelle and Bessie, a preacher man so into his drink that John can’t help but laugh when he thinks of the stern nuns who put him up for a week until his foster family came to claim him. There’s Susan, beautiful in her own way but cruel and wrathful. Another drunk no one seems to know the name of, and they all call him Uncle, like he’s always been part of their lives. John thinks Uncle might be older than Hosea, but Hosea <em> acts </em> older, like he’s lived for too many years and Uncle hasn’t lived for enough, maybe.</p>
<p>Arthur, he sees less of as the gang grows. They still share a room, when Arthur has the desire to be with them at all. They all know he’s got some girl, Mary, and she’s stringing him along like he isn’t busy with the gang, with <em> John </em>.</p>
<p>John watches. John seethes.</p>
<p>He knows whatever this feeling in his gut is, it isn’t natural, and so he ignores it. Goes out to race for pinks and play chicken with whatever bumfuck idiots the town they’re scamming happen to have, and sells the cars back to them. It’s a decent operation, the sort of barely legal thing Hosea applauds him for when he finally confides that he hasn’t been out with his thumb up his ass like <em> some people </em>. Hosea just laughs at him, tells him to keep it up, and it floods him with warmth and peace like he hasn’t known in years.</p>
<p>But still, no one will tell him why the fuck they can’t go further south, why they need to circle around Montana, why Arthur will leave for weeks and no one will bat an eye but he can’t even leave for four hours without getting kitchen duty with Susan for his troubles. It grates on him, until he feels like it’s going to burst out of him, make his skin combust, and maybe he’s being every inch the petulant child Arthur says he is but they’ve never kept secrets like this from each other and John needs to know.</p>
<p>He starts asking, every night that Arthur isn’t away on some painfully chaste date with <em> Mary </em> (a fact he knows because sometimes he follows them, sometimes the ache in his chest at being left out burns a little too bright, and kitchen duty for a couple of days is worth assuaging that sort of pain) or out doing <em> whatever </em> he does for weeks on end.</p>
<p>Most of the time he’s greeted with silence. Or a simple “shut the hell up, kid.” If Arthur is drunk, he gets mean about it, cruel and vicious, tears John apart until he feels like he’s nothing more than that twelve year old fresh from being strung up and terrified. </p>
<p>John stops asking, after too many cruel nights in a row, even if he knows that it’s his fault for asking, his fault for <em> prying </em>. Decides it would be better to sleep in the car. It’s cold and it’s October but it’s a sort of hurt that he can fix, not like the confusing ache in his heart. </p>
<p>Arthur comes to find him after the better part of a week, hauls him up by the scruff of his neck and walks him back to their -- to <em> Arthur’s </em> room like he’s all of thirty pounds soaking wet. It’s embarrassing and he knows that Dutch sees it happening and does nothing, and that makes it worse. This motel is a particularly shitty one, smells like damp, abandoned for the better part of five years but still better than cramming all of them into the cars or the Airstream that Hosea and Bessie share.</p>
<p>“Why are you <em> ignorin’ </em> me, boy?” Arthur spits out, tossing John onto what used to be his bed. He’s red in the face, and John shuffles back onto the bed, tucking himself out of Arthur’s reach. An old reaction, one that John’s never been quite able to snuff out after so many years with his father.</p>
<p>“I ain’t,” he says, sniffles, voice smaller than he means it to be. “‘S just that there’s more room in the car, ‘s all.”</p>
<p>Arthur gives him a look, like he can’t quite tell if John is actually stupid enough to believe that a lie that obvious will work, and sighs. “If you’re done being a complete idiot,” he starts, pauses, looking like he’s trying to pick out a particularly complicated set of words. John isn’t sure what exactly Arthur has to say to him that hasn’t already been said. He knows that Arthur thinks he’s functionally useless, an <em> invasion </em>into Arthur’s precious space, an annoyance. John knew that before Arthur said it, but the fact that Arthur felt it necessary to state was enough of a sign that Arthur truly was done with their -- whatever they could even consider it. Not a friendship, not really anything. Just a lonely kid and the poor sucker he’d been pawned off on. </p>
<p>John’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t hear what Arthur says, doesn’t notice Arthur is speaking until the bastard snaps his fingers in front of John’s eyes. “What?” he asks, glaring daggers up at Arthur through his curtain of hair. </p>
<p>“I am tryin’ to <em> apologize </em> and you ain’t even got the sense god gave you to <em> listen </em>,” Arthur says. “Last time I try to do somethin’ nice for you, and that’s a promise.” John blinks, feeling somewhat dumbfounded. Apologize? For what? He’d never heard Arthur apologize for telling the truth, never really heard him apologize for anything at all. He says as much, and Arthur laughs at him, messes his hair up in that way he used to before he got all entangled with Mary, twisted up in her skirts like a damn fly in a trap. </p>
<p>“I ain’t mad at you, kid,” he says, settling onto John’s bed beside him, leaning back on his arms. Arthur has a toothpick in his mouth, and John can’t stop from staring at the way it moves in his mouth. “You just don’t know when to shut your damn trap and sometimes that shit grates on a feller is all. But that don’t mean you gotta go sleepin’ in a car in goddamned October like some sort of idiot yearning for the flu.”</p>
<p>“Maybe I ain’t ready to drop it,” John says, because even still, he wants to <em> know </em>. “Maybe I want to know what we’re always doin’ around this shithole every three months or so.”</p>
<p>Arthur sighs, rubs his nose. “If I tell you it’s for a job, will you leave off and trust me to it?”</p>
<p>“No.” If anything, the knowledge that it’s a job makes John want to join in, to be <em> helpful </em>.</p>
<p>“Well then, I guess you’re just gonna have to wait until you’re all grown up, then, little Johnny Martson.”</p>
<p>“Fuck off, Arthur.”</p>
<p>“Language!” Arthur says in a surprisingly good impression of Hosea, save for his ever-present drawl. They laugh, and it feels light and easy. Like it should be.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Contrary to what it may seem like, I do genuinely adore mary and abigail as characters and I think that on the whole they get a bad rap for how they act. Unfortunately for them, this story is told from John's perspective and he's a textbook unreliable narrator. </p>
<p>Some notes:</p>
<p>racing for pinks: a car race in which two people race for ownership of the losers car<br/>playing chicken: driving your car towards another person in their car and seeing who bails first</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. bring us your dreamers, your harlots, and your sins</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“I am pretty fuckin’ spectacular,” John replies, because he isn’t entirely above making fun of himself. Not when they’re alone, at least. </p>
<p>“Yeah,” Arthur agrees, more serious than John had expected. John colours under the praise, an ugly flush that starts at his collarbone and creeps up his neck. </p>
<p>They don’t meet each other’s eyes again, even after Arthur checks to make sure his nose is straight. Even as Arthur leaves his trailer.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warnings: oblique mention of puking, someone breaks their nose, drug mention, alcohol consumption and drunkenness, sex</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>1966 - Las Vegas, Nevada</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a new hotel opening. Brand new thing Hosea says is named after some character from </span>
  <em>
    <span>One Thousand and One Nights</span>
  </em>
  <span>, which John has only read once. He liked it well enough, all blood and gore and sex, but he’s not really at the age where books appeal to him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He figures it must be eternally frustrating to Hosea to have raised two boys and have neither particularly interested in doing anything but running cons with him, especially not anything like </span>
  <em>
    <span>reading</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but for all that, John figures he bears it well. Probably has better things to think about than what John and Arthur get up to, in any case. ‘65 had been a hard year — Bessie had passed in August, something the doctors couldn’t quite make heads or tails of but called pneumonia. Hosea had curled inwards, as far as John could tell, and only in the last month of dry desert and tumbleweed and Dutch’s persistence had he begun to look more like himself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John has never quite known what to do with grief, both his and others, and mostly chooses to ignore it. The sooner everyone starts acting like themselves again, the sooner Hosea will be back to normal, John figures. Maybe it isn’t a particularly kind way to look at the world, but the world has never been particularly kind to John. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur, well — Arthur is an entirely different type of problem. He’d gone mean, after they left Montana for the last time, last year. Mean and hard and closed off to the things he used to love. The jokes got a little crueler. The risks got a little bigger. John figures it’s just Mary problems, but no one will tell him. They’d picked up and moved as soon as they could, over to Washington and then following the coast down, and John had never seen beauty like that, all wild and untamed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No one talks about Montana, anymore. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Uncle takes him gambling, because he’s eighteen now and according to Uncle eighteen is a perfect age to lose your money and your head. He’s never seen so many lights in his life and his vision feels a bit like it’s swimming before his eyes. They don’t go to the Aladdin because Dutch has told him it’s off limits right now, on account of some plan he has involving Arthur and Hosea and counting cards with the new dealers. That suits him just fine. Being near Arthur and not able to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>close</span>
  </em>
  <span> is a sort of torture that he feels under his ribcage. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a certain sort of irony that they end up at Caesar’s Palace, then, John thinks bitterly. The ache hasn’t gone away, it never does, but distance from Arthur lets it ease ever so slightly, a knot unfurling but never completely. He’s learned to live with it, ever since Hosea made a sly comment to him when he was freshly seventeen. The comment is mostly forgotten, now, something about how John’s always </span>
  <em>
    <span>watching</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but the feeling of his stomach dropping out from under him, from standing two feet left of center and realizing the world is an entirely different place than he thought it was, that will never be forgotten. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Uncle assures him that the gambling is on him, which is to say, someone else entirely is paying for it, and John happily sets up shop at a craps table, because he’s shit at everything else. No mind for poker, according to Dutch, and John can’t blame him exactly. His letters he managed to learn by thirteen, but arithmetic beyond the bare minimum alluded him until he was deemed hopeless by an exasperated Hosea. What use is there in math other than to know how much faster you need to drive to avoid the barney’s, anyways?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the sort of night that passes in a blur of high expectations and low rewards, typical for John by now, but he enjoys it all the same. Gets well and truly sauced with Uncle. They wander the strip until they can’t walk, admiring the ugly adornments on the buildings and the girls as they go buy. At one point Uncle shouts “Less is less and more is more!” at a massive fluorescent flamingo and John laughs as though it’s the funniest thing he’s heard in weeks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Needless to say, Dutch is disappointed in them when they stumble back into their little trailer camp, parked just on the edge of town. </span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>When he wakes up, everything hurts. John is somewhat surprised that he wakes up at all, but his stomach makes its unhappiness known to him in short order. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After he’s relieved his stomach of its contents such as they were, he takes stock of himself. His head thumps to a tune he can’t quite hear, and his body aches with the soreness of hours of physical exertion. More concernedly, he’s not in </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span> trailer. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It isn’t until he spots Arthur in the corner that he feels a vague sense of relief. Arthur holds his little diary (“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Journal</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it’s a journal, Johnny, ya damn fool.”), taps it on his knee, pages firmly closed. John wonders vaguely what he was writing. Stupidly hopes it was about him. “Well, Johnny-boy?” he says, not really a question even though it’s framed like one. “I sure hope y’gonna clean that toilet.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes a second — a </span>
  <em>
    <span>long</span>
  </em>
  <span> second — for the thought to process through his sluggish brain. “Why’m I not in my trailer, Morgan?” he asks, ignoring Arthur’s jab about the toilet. Once they’d grown too big in numbers to jump from derelict motel to derelict motel, Hosea figured it was time they corralled a little posse of trailers for them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John liked it, because he was finally fucking alone. John hated it, too, because he was finally fucking alone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hosea and Dutch was worried you’d die in your sleep, as out of it as you was. They so kindly asked me to oblige you my bed.” The words roll around in Arthur’s mouth and it sounds like fields of cotton, warm and soft except where it stings and leaves him bleeding. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ain’t you just a Georgia peach,” John says, slumping against the counter. Arthur hums a little, a small self-satisfied smirk on his face. John hates him. “Well, this has been lovely as all get out but I—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur stands, all broad shoulders and large in a way that John will never be. He still towers over John, even though they’re almost of a height and John’s shoulders usually have a wedge.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Way I see it, Marston, you owe me.” His voice has the usual apathetic tone John’s heard him take on just before stabbing someone, all icy calmness. Rarely has it been turned in his direction. There’s a trickle of fear that runs up his spine, not wholly rational but still there. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Owe</span>
  </em>
  <span> you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Arthur’s close, closer than he’s been to John in years, occupying space John would really rather be his. An impractical part of his brain hopes that maybe what Arthur wants is physical, something he can give easily, willingly. Like he’d be so fucking lucky. Like he has anything Arthur would want.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kitchen duty for a week. Our dear Mister Pearson can’t cut potatoes for shit.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John groans.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>He takes his punishment without much hassle, although half of his clothes feel semi-permanently starched and the other half reek of fried onions. Arthur tells him on the fifth day that his potato cutting ability isn’t too fucking awful, and it warms some part of him he doesn’t want to think about.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>Arthur tries to teach him to count cards — something Hosea picked up in some book or another back in ‘62 and subsequently taught Arthur. From what John’s gathered it’s the linchpin of whatever they’re doing at the Aladdin, which John is growing more and more thankful that he was not included in. Everytime John thinks he’s got a handle on it, he realizes he’s missed something and ends up busting out or losing to the dealer. Arthur thinks it’s fucking hilarious, up until John throws a handful of the sunflower seeds they’d been using as chips in his face. He gets serious in a big fucking hurry, like John’s pissed in his cereal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then they’re running around their little trailer camp, John howling with laughter and Arthur howling with the righteous indignation of a man wronged. He’s almost in the clear until Bill, fat sack of shit that he is, sticks his foot out, tripping John in the process. He lands flat on his face, and the bright shock of pain tells John that he’s fucked up his nose rather spectacularly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur hauls him up, clearly intent on slapping him around a bit until he sees the blood streaming down John’s face and dripping into the hot sand of the desert. John watches the way the blood splatters as he’s tugged along by the back of his shirt towards his trailer by Arthur. Thinks deliriously there’s something poetic about being cleaned up by Arthur for the umpteenth time, thinks about the ledger of favours owed he assumes Arthur keeps in his head like John does. John owes Hosea and Dutch his life, his physical body, but it feels like he owes Arthur a bit of his soul. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His trailer is a mess, empty beer bottles and more than a few half finished joints littering his little table. He lets Arthur manhandle him up and onto his bed, accepts some unwashed shirt and holds it against his face to help stopper the bleeding while Arthur digs through his bathroom for the first aid kit Susan had insisted all the trailers were outfitted with. John figures she was just tired of patching up their idiocy herself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur returns, grips the shirt John is holding in a hand of his own to pull it down, and John tries to ignore the way their hands touch like they’re meant to be together. That’s the sort of thinking that gets you in jail, or, worse, turns you bitter like Bill. And it isn’t even like he doesn’t like girls, because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s just </span>
  <em>
    <span>Arthur</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He realizes he’s been holding his breath for too long, thinking too hard, when Arthur snaps his fingers in front of John’s face. “You hit your head </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>hard, Johnny?” he says, asks, whatever, laughing a bit in the way he does when no one else is around. It makes John think that maybe whatever happened in ‘65 to break Arthur didn’t manage to do so, at least not completely. “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>said</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it ain’t broken. Y’did manage some spectacular bleedin’, at least.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I am pretty fuckin’ spectacular,” John replies, because he isn’t entirely above making fun of himself. Not when they’re alone, at least. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Arthur agrees, more serious than John had expected. John colours under the praise, an ugly flush that starts at his collarbone and creeps up his neck. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They don’t meet each other’s eyes again, even after Arthur checks to make sure his nose is straight. Even as Arthur leaves his trailer. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even at dinner, hours later. </span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>They leave Vegas in a trail of dust and a rain of bullets. Something went wrong, in the end, but Dutch assured John as they started splitting up into pairs to better evade law enforcement that the take was good. Arthur doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to do anything other than tip his dusty hat onto his face and sleep. It pisses John off, but after trying to smack Arthur awake and having his abdomen hit so violently John almost crashes the car, he doesn’t bother.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He allows the anger simmer within him, always at a slow boil. The way they’re headed, John expects a blow out in three days. Too long in each other’s company and they’re at each other’s throats, an old sort of antagonism that’s almost second nature at this point. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They check into a motel in a shithole one street town called Elko. Arthur insists it isn’t far enough away from Vegas for his comfort, but it wasn’t particularly fucking comfortable to drive six hours with Arthur snoring beside him and nothing but radio static for entertainment so John figures that Arthur can get fucked. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The room only has one bed because it’s exactly </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> sort of motel. The bed at least is </span>
  <em>
    <span>upgraded</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and it takes exactly six seconds for John and Arthur to wrestle their way towards it, John intent on dumping as much pocket change into it as required to make it vibrate and Arthur intent on killing him if he manages it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John squirms out of Arthur’s grasp, mostly because Arthur is tired as dirt. The bed makes the most ungainly fucking noise as it starts vibrating, but it isn’t quite loud enough to drown out the sigh he hears from Arthur. John’s responding laughter is met with a dusty leather jacket to the face. </span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>They’re pressed side to side, like canned sardines, Arthur clearly trying not to take up any more space than he really must, John staking a claim to his side of the bed out of sheer obstinacy. John knows Arthur is always, </span>
  <em>
    <span>always</span>
  </em>
  <span> conscious of the amount of space he occupies, but he’s too bone tired and annoyed by the entire fucking situation to care. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nevada is fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>hot</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re in their underclothes, sweating, pressed up against each other and on top of the covers, and it’s a fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>problem</span>
  </em>
  <span>. John knows, he fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that if he thinks about Arthur for longer than a few seconds he’ll have a very serious issue to deal with. Arthur is Arthur. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What happened with the casino?” John finally asks when the silence stretches too long between them, a line pulled taut and snapped by the sound of his voice. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur is silent for a long moment, so long John thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep. It’s only in the lack of soft snoring John has become so familiar with over the last six years that tells him that isn’t the case. There’s a sigh, light, but full of frustration. “Davey went and spilled to some showgirl last night. Damn fool can’t think with anything but his cock. Cops was there in plainclothes. Let us think we was in the clear and then — well. It was a fuckin’ ruckus.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John turns over, away from Arthur, lays on his side and tries to ignore the scratchiness of the pillow. “Ain’t no one dead, right?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nah, not as far as I saw.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John nods at this, like the fact that no one died is good enough for him. It isn’t — he knows they need to eat, a place to sleep. The shit that worked when it was the four of them doesn’t work so good (so </span>
  <em>
    <span>well</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he can hear Hosea correcting in his ear) now that there’s so many of them. Dutch will sort it out, of course. Dutch always sorts it out. But he knows Arthur will fuss and worry in the meantime. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a single beam of light pooling in from the crack in the blinds, ugly moth eaten things that do just enough to keep the rest of the street light out. The light shines across the worn out carpet, up the bed. John imagines it must shine right on Arthur like a halo. He doesn’t want to turn and look, knowing he won’t be able to stop his fool tongue from saying something Arthur will regret hearing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He turns anyways, because John has never been good about controlling himself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur’s hair shines like Apollo’s must have before the sun melted his wings, ugly orange street light turned beautiful only because of who it’s shining on. John doubts he’s ever personally looked beautiful. Hosea and Bessie had called him handsome, once, when he was fifteen, and Arthur had laughed and said you could dress a dog up but you couldn’t take him out. John supposed he was right, then, and he knows he hasn’t gotten more handsome as he ages. Arthur tilts his head, as if he can sense John looking at him. Their faces are impossibly close, the sort of distance they usually only approach when they’re in the middle of a heated argument. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“‘chu wan’, Johnny?” His voice is scratchy with sleep, but coherent enough that John isn’t worried that he accidentally roused him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What does he want?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I been thinkin’,” he starts, and that gets a chuckle out of Arthur. John bats him in the arm, annoyed. “Shut up. I been thinkin’.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“‘bout what?” Arthur asks after a too long pause. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John takes a deep breath, steeling himself for a night spent sleeping in the car. “Kissin’ you,” he mumbles, almost too quietly for Arthur to hear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s another long pause, heavy with something John can’t quite identify. Probably just Arthur mustering up the strength to push him off the bed without moving overmuch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why you thinkin’ ‘bout somethin’ foolish as that?” Arthur asks. There’s an immediate surge of anger rising inside John — he isn’t a </span>
  <em>
    <span>fool</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and just because Arthur is a sad sack of shit that doesn’t give him the right to call John names. He tamps that down, trying to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>mature</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Still, he kicks his heel into the bed a little, awkward. Any hope of Arthur just </span>
  <em>
    <span>kissing him</span>
  </em>
  <span> goes out the window. Apparently he wants to fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>talk</span>
  </em>
  <span> about it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because you’re — you’re you, Arthur,” John says, thinking he sounds particularly ineloquent. This would have been so much easier if Arthur wasn’t Arthur, but John wouldn’t be interested in him if that were the case. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He watches Arthur swallow, uncomfortable, and realizes that maybe he’s not the only one who’s been thinking about this for longer than just the last minute. But Arthur is a gentleman — Arthur would never have acted on his feelings. Arthur is good and needs John to make the first move. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jus’ — you can punch me, if you don’ like it,” he mumbles, and then he’s pressing his lips to Arthur’s, entirely unsure of what to do. He’s never kissed before, never held someone’s hand. He’s watched, </span>
  <em>
    <span>studied</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but dancing girls have a way of kissing that he doubts Arthur would appreciate. He pulls back after a moment, almost bashful, waiting for a punch that doesn’t come. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur presses up, a little, presses their lips back together, and it’s like he’s trying to teach John what to do. Arthur is almost as bad with his words as John is, but there’s an innate physicality to the both of them that John has always appreciated. Their lips slot together, and John can feel just a hint of Arthur’s tongue licking against the seam of his chapped lips. He opens up in invitation — as if he’d ever hold anything back from Arthur — and Arthur takes the opportunity to thread a hand in John’s hair, hold him tight and close and safe like John’s always wanted. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John shuffles to bridge the distance between the two of them, movements stiff as he tries not to break the kiss for anything other than air. Arthur chuckles against his mouth and shuffles as well, and then it’s like fireworks. John feels </span>
  <em>
    <span>small</span>
  </em>
  <span> against Arthur, like he’s not nearing six feet tall and lanky, but Arthur’s always had the bigger shoulders, the bigger personality. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With Arthur, John feels </span>
  <em>
    <span>cherished</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur breaks the kiss after a long minute, pressing their foreheads together and chuckling. “Been thinkin’ ‘bout that for a while, Johnny-boy?” he asks, already knowing the answer. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shut the hell up,” John snipes back, but he lets his hands worry at some frayed stitching on Arthur’s undershirt, because Arthur didn’t say that wasn’t allowed and therefore it must be. His dick is hard in his briefs, and he’s trying to ignore it, trying to focus on literally anything else. He knows Arthur knows this, because Arthur knows everything about John. Always has and always will. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Got a little problem down there?” he says with a knowing smirk. John makes an aborted little sound that could conceivably be a yes, an ugly flush rising up his chest. “Need someone to, uh — tend to it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That</span>
  </em>
  <span> makes John freeze, shock written plain on his face. He makes a keening sound in the back of his throat — how many times had he dreamed of Arthur asking that exact question? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur chuckles again, letting his hand slowly slide down the long line of John’s torso. He’s skinny, still, always too skinny to be pretty, too skinny to be a man. Just ugly John. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I, uh — I ain’t never thought you’d be interested,” Arthur admits with a little awkward crook of his mouth, like he thought </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>was the deviant, and now it’s John’s turn to laugh. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“O’course, Arthur.” John shuffles, always so awkward in his movements, trying to give Arthur better access to whatever parts of him Arthur wants. Arthur, for his part, takes the opportunity to trace out John’s ribs, his bellybutton, maps out the little wisps of hair that travel southward and disappear beneath the line of his briefs. His fingers, broad and thick and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Arthur</span>
  </em>
  <span>, dip just beneath the waistband and pull downward until John’s cock springs onto his belly like some demented Jack-In-A-Box. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks up at John, searches his face for assent before wrapping his hand loosely around his cock. It feels so different from when he does it to himself, and his hips push into Arthur’s hand with little aborted thrusts. His breathing is already laboured, like he’s running a race and he suppose he is in some way, a race against Arthur coming to his senses, a race against all the women who want Arthur and can never have him like this. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John pulls Arthur’s head down into a kiss, and he knows what he’s doing now, sort of, but it’s wet and their teeth clack anyways because he’s always been a little overeager and there’s no point in stopping that now. Half of his kisses turn into whines as Arthur slowly coaxes him through to climax, a shuddering thing that lands on both of them and especially on Arthur’s hand. The pearlescent drops look stunning against the tan of Arthur’s skin. He’d wanted to last longer, but he’s never done anything like this before and Arthur hushes him, assures him he did good. Calls John </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span>, once, even. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>John’s hands travel towards Arthur’s briefs, cup his cock through a layer of fabric. There’s a damp spot and John feels like smiling at the knowledge that </span>
  <em>
    <span>he’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> the reason Arthur is hard. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You ever — you ever used your mouth, Johnny?” Arthur asks, heat in his cheeks and purposefully not looking at John. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I ain’t never done any of this,” John replies, painfully earnest and also a little bit to see the shock on Arthur’s face when he realizes he’s John’s first anything. Arthur </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span> make a noise, a little click in the back of his throat like he’s trying to bite back a moan and then he sighs. John barrels on before Arthur can decide that this is all a bad idea. “I wanna do it, I just — show me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur chews on this for a moment before nodding, rolling onto his back. “Get between my legs,” he says, maneuvering John until John’s hands are on Arthur’s hips and Arthur’s legs bracket his body. He feels small again, like Arthur could crush him between his thighs if he wanted to. John runs a tentative hand along Arthur’s waistband, waiting for permission he isn’t sure is going to come. Finally, Arthur nods, and John tugs on Arthur’s underwear, tucking the band behind Arthur’s balls to keep it out of the way. He licks his lips as he sees a single bead of precum welling at the tip, highlighted by the awful beam of light streaming in from the road. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur gives him an encouraging nudge to the hip and John bends down, tongue coming out to lap at the head, and that perfect little bead of precum that he’s decided represents his hopes and dreams with Arthur, even if that’s a bit insane. It tastes salty, like all of John’s dreams end up, and he supposed that’s representative of something too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gradually, he begins to suckle at the head. Arthur looks down at him, resting on his forearms to better see John work, but doesn’t say anything. Nothing negative, nothing positive, nothing. In a way, it’s a relief. If he’s going to disappoint Arthur, he’d rather not know. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gently, Arthur nudges at his hand, encouraging him to grip the base of his cock, coos “that’s a boy” when John does as instructed. It sets off fireworks in his stomach, that Arthur has this sort of power over him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t know how long he works at Arthur’s cock — time doesn’t seem to exist in their little motel room. His jaw aches and he leans into the pain. Reminds himself it’s for </span>
  <em>
    <span>Arthur</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he can do anything for Arthur. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur grunts, all the warning he manages before he pulls out of John’s mouth, spilling over his face and their hands where they meet on Arthur’s cock. John darts a tongue out on his lips to taste and cringes. Arthur laughs at him, breathless, which causes John to punch him in the thigh. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Baby,” Arthur teases once he’s caught his breath, laying back in bed, looking resplendent. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I knew I shoulda put more quarters in for the bed,” John grumbles, but he’s smiling, like the world is alright. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s John and Arthur now, JohnandArthur, the two of them together. He hums a little as he cleans them both up with a scratchy towel, smiling more than he has in the last six months.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>They don’t talk about it in the morning, and that’s alright. John doesn’t need to talk about it. John can read Arthur, can see from the set of his shoulders that Arthur is okay with what happened. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That maybe he’ll even let them do it again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When they finally track the camp down, Dutch welcomes them with open arms. No one else knows John’s entire world has shifted three degrees to the right. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t matter, because he’s got Arthur. And Arthur has him. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry this took so long, I've been Going Through It with the corn teen and work.</p>
<p>Chapter Notes: <br/>1. Bessie dies of légionnaires disease -- the first outbreak was in the summer of 1965, although it was not officially discovered as a disease until 1976.<br/>2. A barney is a term used to reference cops on the Andy Griffiths Show, which I believe Hosea would have loved.<br/>3. Uncle shouting "Less is less and more is more" is an old adage of Post Modernism and Maximalism, of which Las Vegas and Atlantic City are two of the biggest architectural testaments to. Without going into a lecture about the shift from the stark whites and empty lines of Modernism towards the bright colours, gaudy signs, and literal giant swans on buildings that typified PoMo, it's basically just a way of saying that people who imply that less is more are boring (more is more and less is a bore, etc etc). <br/>4. The very first book about counting cards that I've been able to track down came out in 1962, and I feel like Hosea would be fascinated with it as a concept, especially in the days before the casinos really caught onto it.<br/>5. Sorry to anyone who lives in Elko, it looks real cute and John is a grump.<br/>6. The vibrating bed was invented in 1958, and is somehow not an anachronism here.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have never been able to write a linear narrative story and finish it to save my life, so I'm hoping that by writing it non-linearly and actually doing this little thing called plotting, I might be able to come out with a coherent fic. It should be 8 chapters unless I turn into a rambly incoherent mess, in which case who knows, but I'm hoping to keep things clean and crisp and concise. Anyways, all of this is to say that I hope you like it.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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